Installation

There are two ways to install Unity on Archlinux: from the source and from a repository.

From source

All of the PKGBUILDs can be browsed on the Github repository, where Unity-For-Arch provides a minimal working Unity shell, and Unity-For-Arch-Extra provides some additional applications, including lightdm-ubuntu (lightdm with ubuntu patches), light-themes, unity-tweak-tool (a popular ubuntu tool) and some more.

To install a minimal Unity shell:

1. 'cd' into a directory, where you want to keep the sources, and run:

To use lightdm to start Unity, follow the same steps mentionned above to install lightdm-ubuntu and lightdm-unity-greeter from the Unity-For-Arch-Extra repository. lightdm needs to be added to autostart daemons. For Systemd users, check the Systemd wiki page.

Tip: To complete this procedure automatically, this script can be used.

Tip: There are many ubuntu-patched packages that replace original Arch packages.
It is also recommended to use freetype2-ubuntu from AUR.

Warning: Remember that you are installing unofficial packages which are not supported by the Arch Linux developers.

Warning: Almost all packages related to Unity in AUR are outdated. Do not mix those packages with the ones provided from the repository.

From testing repository

There is also a testing repository which provides bleeding edge features and is almost always synchronized to the changes made in Github repository. You may want to use it if you prefer newest features or if you've encountered some package conflicts while using the repositories mentioned above.

Update

For Unity repository, the update is the same as packages from official repositories.

Otherwise:

1. 'cd' into the 'Unity-for-Arch' directory where it was originally cloned

2. pull all of changes from github repository:

$ git pull

3. Check if packages need to be updated:

$ ./What_can_I_update\?.py

4. If any packages need to be updated, just build them like mentioned above in from source section.

Note: Sometimes if certain crucial package is updated, those package which depend on it will also need to be recompiled though they won't be reported. For example, Unity is often required to be recompiled if nux gets updated